Our Firm

Established in 1977, Reno & Cavanaugh (R&C) is a national law firm with a mission to strengthen communities across the country. From residential and mixed-use projects, to office buildings, shopping centers, and transit-oriented developments, R&C structures transactions to bring the full slate of public and private resources to bear. We dedicate the same level of expertise to our many clients who work on smaller real estate transactions in rural areas as we do to those with larger projects in urban areas, and we share our clients' deep commitment to improving and diversifying the housing and economic development opportunities in the communities they serve.

The firm's practice includes a broad range of real estate development, finance, regulatory, and legislative advocacy services. We have represented clients engaged in some of the largest redevelopment efforts in the country, including Chicago's Plan for Transformation, economic development East of the River in Washington, D.C. and development in New Orleans, LA. We dedicate the same commitment to commercial clients acquiring and developing land to suit their business purposes, and, more and more often, find that the business goals of commercial clients align with the economic development goals of public entities.

Our firm has a wide variety of development- and finance-oriented clients seeking to use national and local programs in innovative and often groundbreaking ways. We represented the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority in one of two transactions cited by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development when creating the mixed-finance development process, which is used today to revitalize communities around the country. More recently, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) invited private developers to join in competition with public entities for funding under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 (NSP2), we worked with a consortium of private and public entities in their successful application for $30 million to acquire, rehabilitate, and redevelop foreclosed, abandoned, and vacant properties in the Nashville Metropolitan area. We are actively engaged with issues related to Enterprise/FHA REO asset disposition.

From its inception, R&C has been at the forefront of housing and community development law and policy at a national level. Our firm has worked on nearly every major affordable housing legislative reform since 1977, including the HOPE VI program, the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (QHWRA), the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHSDA), the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the Moving to Work (MTW) program, the Choice Neighborhoods program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, R&C was intimately involved with drafting and seeking passage of much of the legislation that defines the rural housing programs presently administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Agency. Our attorneys have a working knowledge of the Community Reinvestment Act, and we actively engage with the U.S. Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, forming and advising Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Community Development Entities (CDEs).

Additionally, we have always supported our clients in identifying innovative solutions, such as in the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986, where affinity groups such as housing authorities were enabled to pool resources to create insurance companies focused on and responsive to their needs. Our attorneys worked on some of the very first transactions involving the pledge of future housing authority Capital Funds to support the issuance of bonds, a financing technique that has greatly expanded the resources available to local agencies for redevelopment efforts. Similarly, when the New Markets Tax Credit program was implemented, we assisted in training potential applicants on how to structure organizations that could benefit from the program, and assisted clients in forming such entities and negotiating transactions with investors. We regularly counsel our clients with respect to issues of green building and energy efficiency, including: Energy Performance Contracts and Power Purchase Agreements and issues related to Renewable Energy and Alternative Energy Generation, Smart Growth, Transit-Oriented Development and Sustainable Development.

R&C does not simply provide legal counsel; we seek to improve the lives of the people and the communities we serve. Our dual local/national concentration focuses on the entire real estate and economic development industry, not just the transactional aspects. We believe this combination results in representation that is better informed and more complete than that available from any other law firm.